


A Future, Solid and Clear

by GenesisHardy



Series: The Struggles and Beauty of their Place/Non-Place [2]
Category: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Bittersweet, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, One Shot, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Sad with a Happy Ending, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22168762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenesisHardy/pseuds/GenesisHardy
Summary: Spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker!"Rey was a bridge—belonging as much to the old Republic as the new, yet not truly belonging to either. She would always be as much of a reminder of the past’s mistakes as she was a symbol of the future’s hope and light. And as much as anyone might try to understand, there was only one other person who could truly comprehend her place and non-place in the world, only one other person who understood its struggles and beauty. And he was gone."A re-imagined ending to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in which Rey mourns her losses and questions her future place in the world.Companion piece to "Someone to Show Him His Place in All This."
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Reylo
Series: The Struggles and Beauty of their Place/Non-Place [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761700
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	A Future, Solid and Clear

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on the ending of TROS, but I thought the movie didn't give Rey enough time to mourn. This is my reimagined ending to the film that gives her that space and provides her with an opportunity to find peace and closure.
> 
> As mentioned in the summary, this is a companion piece to "Someone to Show Him His Place in All This," which can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273206. Although I didn't originally intend to write a companion piece for this, I believe that the two stories complement each other well. If you'd like to follow the story chronologically, read "Someone to Show Him His Place in All This" first.
> 
> I'm new to this site, so please leave kudos or comments! Anything you like (or didn't like) would be greatly appreciatedas I love working to improve my writing!
> 
> All the characters and places in this work belong to Disney and Lucasfilm. I own nothing.

Rey should have been happy.

The scene before her was truly something to behold. The greens and browns of the surrounding forest appeared brighter than ever, more lush and vivid and filled with sun than even a few days before, when Rey had left in search of the Sith wayfinder. The Rebel aircraft, though burned and broken, shone brightly, as though proud of their battle scars. Everyone around her was smiling, tears falling from the corners of their eyes. They hugged Resistance members they had never even spoken to as tightly as they held their closest friends. The war was over, and it was as though the galaxy and everything in it could finally breathe again. 

So why was she having so much trouble breathing? Even when focusing on her breath, as Luke had taught her on Ahch-To and as Leia had taught her in the last year, Rey still couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs. 

Everything around her was a vivid blur, something she couldn’t quite grab onto. Resistance fighters crowded around the young Jedi, eagerly grabbing her hand or patting her shoulder. Amid happy beeps from the droids, people shouted “Long live the Resistance!” Rey wandered through the crowd, but she couldn’t make sense of what people said to her or who was holding her. She didn’t know where to go. She was alone in a sea of joy and relief, stranded on an island with an ocean between herself and friends she couldn’t seem to reach. Even as Finn and Poe—her family—held her tightly in their arms, she felt apart. Alone. Their tears fell in her hair, their bloody, sweaty, war-torn clothes pressed against her shoulders, their shouts of joy rang in her ears, but she couldn’t comprehend any of it. She was alone in an echo chamber, and although she had ached for so long to be released from her lonely island, the only thought she could clearly form now was the need to be alone, away from the noise and the smell, the lights and the people. 

They had won. The Final Order was destroyed, the Emperor was dead, and the Resistance had survived. Wounded, sure, but alive. She should have hugged her new family eagerly and held them tight. She should have run to them rather than being absently swept up in their caring arms. She should have been filled with joy, and she should have embraced the moment they had all been waiting for. Instead, she could only embrace her desire to remain on her island for just a moment longer.

 _I should be happy_ , Rey repeated to herself, but even with her family alive and holding her close, she felt lonely.

  
  


The joy of winning the war turned into a party as the night went on, but Rey left early. First she returned to Red Five to retrieve the simple black shirt she had hidden, but she couldn’t remain in the X-wing for long without feeling overwhelmed by all that had happened. She tried meditating in the woods— _Be with me_ —but it was impossible to concentrate with all the noise from the festivities. Running had somewhat helped, but she was still weak. By her third fall in as many minutes, she decided that maybe she just needed to lie down. Her room wasn't a far walk, and although she was sure that sleep wouldn't come, she thought looking through the old Jedi texts might help her focus. Relax. Feel at least somewhat normal, as though everything was stable. The texts were as stable as anything could be; they hadn't changed in a thousand generations. That was what she needed: Stability. Normalcy. But as much as she tried, she couldn't focus on the words in front of her.

There was a light knock at the door, which slowly opened to reveal Finn, still bright-eyed and grinning. "Hey," he said, walking over to sit next to her. "Why'd you leave the party? You know we won, right?" His smile grew, and although she tried, her smile never really took shape.

"Yeah, I know." A moment passed before she added, "I don't know. I guess I’m just tired.”

Even though her eyes were trained on her hands, she could feel Finn staring at her. She knew that he was worried about her, that he wanted to ask if she was okay, which he did shortly after. When she didn't reply, he continued, "We did take a few hits, but you, Poe, and me? We made it. We're alive, and I refuse to believe that it isn't a good sign that we all survived."

Rey was silent. She held the black shirt tightly, yet reverently, but still her hands felt cold.

_Empty._

Finn was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him, instead remaining lost in thoughts that always returned to the empty feeling in her hands. She was only pulled from those thoughts when she heard his name.

“Ben?” She heard her voice waver, but Finn didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, Kylo Ren too. Look, Rey, you’re safe now. The First Order, the Emperor, Kylo Ren—it’s all dead and in the past…” 

Finn’s voice trailed on, but Rey didn’t hear a word. She searched desperately for the connection she had fought to close for so long, but she couldn’t find any proof it had ever existed. There was nothing. Ben was gone. The constant pull of his thoughts, the sudden waves of anger and confusion, the deep and steady tone of his voice, the rise and fall of his breath—they had all vanished, leaving her stranded and questioning when she had begun to rely on his solid presence. She had hated his voice in her head, hated the distant presence of him on a far-off ship, hated knowing that he could feel her own thoughts and emotions as deeply as she felt his. So when had this initial hatred changed into something else? Something she couldn’t find a name for? When had she begun to find his faint presence comforting? 

Rey hadn’t told anyone about their force bond. At first she was ashamed, afraid Finn and Poe and the rest of the Resistance would think she was somehow working with Kylo Ren. But after a while, even after knowing that none of them would think this, she didn’t say a word. It seemed wrong to let them in on something so intimate. She focused on her training and heard of the First Order’s actions and the Rebels’ responses, but she remained silent about her force bond with Ben. 

She hadn’t told her Resistance family a lot of things. Snoke’s throne room? Yes, she’d told them that it was Kylo Ren— _not Ben_ —and that he now believed himself to be Supreme Leader. What she hadn’t told them was that he offered his hand or that after hearing him whisper “Please,” she wished she could reach out and take it. And yes, she had told Finn about her dream of sitting with Ben on the Sith throne, but she hadn’t said that the only part she really objected to was the Sith throne part. She hadn’t said that she wanted to reach Ben, to help him see that they weren’t really all that different and that he could be saved and accepted just as she had been. She hadn’t told anyone that she felt relieved when she saw Ben had come to help her fight the Emperor or that his small nod was all she needed to know she could survive what felt like her final battle. She hadn’t said how much it killed her to feel his hand fade from hers after seeing him smile—truly smile. And she had smiled too. And for a moment, she had been happy. 

But she hadn’t told anyone. Not even him. 

Rey didn’t notice Finn’s absence until long after he left. She remained seated on the edge of her bed, hands lightly folded in front of her, eyes trained down at the shirt’s simple weaving and the faint creases which covered her palms and knuckles. The moon was full, and noises from the party drifted up through her open window, but Rey didn’t notice. Until long after the sun rose, she could only stare at her hands and try to remember what exactly it had felt like to hold his, if only for a moment.

  
  


“You’re leaving? You can’t leave,” Poe said when he and Finn caught her boarding the Falcon. “We still need you. The Resistance still needs you.” 

“Yeah,” Finn added, gently putting his hand on her shoulder. “We can’t clean up the First Order’s mess in a few weeks. It’s going to take a while, and you’re the hope that everyone needs right now.”

Both men stared at her, silently begging her not to go. A part of her wished she could stay—they were family, after all, and she would miss them after she had left— but Rey knew she had to go. “It’s not forever,” she started to say, but when their pleading eyes didn’t change, she added, “I just need some time. Space. I don’t know exactly, but I know I can’t be here right now.” 

She didn’t think either one of them fully understood, but she was glad they let her go anyway. It felt good to fly the Falcon again. She had missed it’s mismatched interior and the systems that had been patched with so many random spare parts that, with one wrong move, the whole ship could crash. She wouldn’t make a wrong move, though. Ships and machines had always been easier to understand than people, and she had never been any good at politics. That was what the Resistance needed now. A politician.

 _First of all, they’ll need a new name. They aren’t resisting anything anymore_ — _it’s all gone_. 

Finn was a better politician than she would be. He was always thinking about the safety of others in regards to the success of their missions. And Poe was a better general than she would be. Maybe he wasn’t a Jedi, and maybe she could beat him in a fight, but he could connect with people, rally them when the fight was tough, and secure a victory with quick thinking, good flying, and great leadership. She had always been alone, and even though she cared for her family in the Resistance, she had only ever fought by herself. Even with her friends by her side, it was as though she was on a different frequency, her movements and skill somehow not combining with theirs despite having the same objective. She did better when she fought alone. 

_Usually_.

He had understood her frequency. Even during their first battle in the forest on Starkiller Base and even with their differing objectives, Ben had been her balance. And when they had the same goal? They had combined seamlessly. Their battle against Snoke and the Praetorian Guard, their battle against the Emperor and his Sith army… it was as if they were extensions of the same person. A dyad in the force. Their movements matched one another’s effortlessly, as though the fight were really a dance which they had been born to perform together. 

But now he was gone, and she was left to sway on the dance floor alone with just the phantom of a memory in the place where he used to stand. And even that phantom was beginning to fade. She desperately wanted to remember his smile, the feel of his newly-healed cheek against her palm, their soft kiss—she needed to remember it perfectly. But was his cheek cold or warm? Were his lips cracked from battle exhaustion or were they soft? Did he know how much she loved him, even if the only words she had found to tell him were not words at all?

He had saved her. He hadn’t left when he thought she was dead, but had taken her into his arms and saved her. And it hurt Rey to think that it was only Ben who had stayed with her at what they all thought was the end. Why hadn’t Finn come down from the Falcon? Why hadn’t Poe turned his ship—or any ship, for that matter—around to come and get her? She was glad that Ben had been the first thing she had seen upon waking and that he had saved her despite the cost, but how could her friends ask her not to leave now when they had been planning to leave her at what had been the most painful moment in her life? How could they not know just how much Ben had sacrificed, how much he’d changed? How could they not see how much she longed to take Ben’s hand and hold him tight and never let go?

  
  


Rey didn’t know where she was going until she had landed. Tatooine. Luke’s home planet. It almost reminded her of Jakku with the dusty sand that stuck to your throat and the barren landscape that reached as far as she could see. It seemed almost poetic—her ending up almost exactly where she had started. True, she did have friends back in the Resistance and her skills as a Jedi had improved, but in that moment, when she stood under Tatooine’s two suns, she believed that nothing had really changed. She was still alone in the desert, with only herself for company. She was still running away, trying to find her place in the world. She still had to fight alone, and she still had no one she could truly rely on. Finn and Poe were great friends, but they wouldn’t understand Ben— _Kylo Ren, they’d say_ —and they still didn’t understand her. No one except Ben ever had. And now he was gone. 

The scavenger reached into her bag and pulled out Ben’s shirt. It was torn and stained from their final battle against Palpatine, but Rey didn’t care. Somehow those imperfections made it seem more real.

She walked aimlessly at first, but soon found her way towards Luke’s childhood home. She sled down the sand as she had done a hundred times on Jakku, into a home she had only heard about in legends. She didn’t know what she had expected, but she could imagine Luke running through the now-sand-filled rooms and staring out at the horizon, longing for something more. But she had already experienced something more. She had fought and died and been saved, and now all she wanted was what she was standing in now—a home. 

Maybe that was back at the Resistance base, with Finn and Rose, Poe and Chewie. She did miss BB-8. But he was Poe’s droid, not hers. And the Resistance base was where they belonged. She belonged here, in the desert. She would always help were she was needed, but she belonged somewhere that was somewhat secluded, somewhere she was free to meditate and explore in relative solitude. 

The war was over, and she was tired, and although she knew there was more that needed to be done, she also knew that it wasn’t her place to build the new order. Rather, it was her place to allow for the building of a new order. And she had done that when she killed Palpatine and destroyed the Sith. She and Ben had given the world a new start, free from the struggle between Jedi and Sith that had raged for generations. 

She was a bridge—belonging as much to the old Republic as the new, yet not truly belonging to either. She would always be as much of a reminder of the past’s mistakes as she was a symbol of the future’s hope and light. And as much as anyone might try to understand, there was only one other person who could truly comprehend her place and non-place in the world, only one other person who understood its struggles and beauty. And he was gone.

  
  


The suns on Tatooine were obscured by dust and sand clouds. Rey stood blurred against the horizon, staring off into the desert, searching for what she should do next. She could go back to the Resistance, help them build a new world filled with the hope they all saw in her. She could travel across systems in the Falcon, as Han Solo had once done. Or she could stay here on Tatooine, living a quiet life as the last Jedi in the same place where Luke had first learned of the Jedi and the Sith and the war. Somehow it seemed a fitting place for the Jedi to end.

Although the sand burned, Rey sat down and began to meditate. _Be with me._ For hours, she felt nothing. No advice from Luke or Leia, no voices from long-dead Jedi or—thank heaven—Sith. She felt nothing in her force bond, almost believing that it had vanished when Ben had. 

Only when the suns were almost below the horizon did she sense it. Something faint, but steady. Something slowly nearing her, cautious yet eager. Something in a place/non-place, a between space.

She took a breath and opened her eyes, and though he was a ghost, he was as solid and clear a presence as she remembered. 

“Ben!” 

She ran to him, and he pulled her into his arms and held her close. Tears began to build behind her closed eyes. Her face, buried in his chest, rose and fell with each of his breaths. His chin rested on her head, and his arms enfolded her, and it was as though she fit perfectly—as though she truly belonged. 

A long moment passed, then another, and it was only after the suns set that she finally pulled back far enough to see his face. Tears fell from her eyes as she reached up to touch his cheek, as she had when he’d saved her. “I thought you were gone. I thought I lost you,” she said, her voice cracking through the weight of her joyful tears. Even in death he hadn’t left her. He had never run from her—not on Starkiller base, not in Snoke’s throne room, not on Exegol. He had never left her. He was as solid a presence as he’d ever been, and she felt as though the normalcy she had longed for were here, now.

He brought his hand to her face, and she leaned into his ghostly palm. “We’re a dyad, Rey. A balance. I’ll never leave so long as you want me to stay.”

“I want you to stay.” Rey smiled, and he smiled, and hand-in-hand, they looked across the stars. 


End file.
